04 jun 07
This weekend was the Virginia-Highland Summerfest in historic Virginia-Highland. Atlanta has a festival practically every weekend in the summer, and this past Saturday and Sunday were no exception.
To round out the selling of overpriced beer and art, on Saturday morning there was a 5K, at 8:00 am, which is just painful for a weekend morning but really good temperature-wise. I’ve run one 5K in VaHi before but had forgotten how lax Georgians are about their short races. There are no chips (no chip no time!), no real starting line, and at the end they hand you a slip on which you are on your honor to write down your name and your time. I considered saying “instantaneous.”
I didn’t do very well, which I’m going to completely blame on the lack of a chip and thus inaccurate timing. See, I’m used to running in Nashville, where they take a little 5K very, very seriously—chips, bananas, and bottled water for everyone, even the stragglers. (I want water at the end of a race, not Caribou Coffee, dammit!) Speaking of stragglers, several of the people I was running with checked out real estate along the course, which I thought was pretty funny.
But, I am too hard on the Summerfest people. It’s just a 5K after all. And there were lots of bananas!